Cheap employers and clients are notorious for going out of scope and being super unreasonable.

The company in this story is no exception.

See for yourself why the consequences were super satisfying.

You want me to resign? Well, good luck without me!

For 10 years I worked from home as automation engineer for a relatively small company what produced custom-built industrial gas treatment units (industrial chillers, compressors stations, that sort of thing).

My job was to write algorithms.

Basically, I was the person who told machines what to do.

I was getting significant below market pay for such position, but I was getting paid for mostly doing nothing.

Nothing lasts forever, unfortunately.

Everything was great until couple years ago, when owner decided to retire and sold the company.

So here comes new management with new policies.

In my country, every worker entitled to at least 4 weeks of paid vacation time per year all unspent vacation is rolled other to the next year, but you have to take at least 2 uninterrupted weeks per year, so if you only take your mandatory vacation, you accumulate 14 additional days per year.

Given how much free time I actually had, I rarely used more than mandatory 2 weeks per year, always making sure what there be no commissioning or maintenance planned during my vacation.

During these events I would remotely access maintenance engineer’s laptop to make necessary adjustments to the algorithms, so everything works perfectly in real working conditions.

But one of the first policies under new management implemented was to schedule vacations.

So now I had to decide when I take my 2 weeks at the start of the year. I chose the first weeks of April.

In early March I get a call from manager of the development team who asks me to come on a quick 3-day work trip to help maintenance engineer switch plc and upload new project.

Apparently, thanks to new maintenance team manager a lot of maintenance engineers quit and they are short staffed and the only one they can send at the moment is bad with computers.

So I agreed to go.

The maintenance engineer is supposedly not only bad with computers, but also knows nothing about electrical work, so I had to do everything myself which I am not actually qualified to do, but at this point I don’t want to disappoint the client, who turned out to be a bunch of really nice people.

After a week and with only 3 burned down fuses, I finished.

After returning home I inform my manager what I am not going to any more business trips since I don’t get paid enough to also do maintenance engineer’s work.

First say of my vacation comes and I get another call to go on another business trip. I agreed.

I check the project and it is huge.

So I call back and tell them I’m doing it remotely and won’t go on another business trip, especially now.

The escape route starts here!

About 15 minutes later I get another call.

The CEO said what if you don’t want to go, you should just write a resignation letter.

I am the only employee who knows how to do my job, but yeah, sure, I’ll send my resignation letter right away.

I was thinking about not doing it so they had to terminate me and pay me termination compensation, but when I decided to be petty in a different way.

In my country you had to give at least 2 weeks notice, unless both parties agree to shorter notice.

So I write my letter and set my resignation day as 14th of April which is 2 weeks. Shortly after it gets approved.

They ask if I will be able to finish the project before I leave. I said I won’t!

Now they are really panicking.

They said I have still have 2 weeks and they really need it done.

Sorry! I am on vacation right now. The last day of my vacation will me April 13th and I am resigning on 14th.

I recently got a message from ex colleague I have friendly relationship with apparently they are in a terrible mess right now.

Deadlines were missed, fines rolled in and company’s accounts have been frozen.

They even were unable to pay salaries for the last 2 months.

They are probably toast and if thing go that way they’ll have to file bankruptcy.

Don’t worry, people will get paid in the end. In my country salary depts have the highest priority when bankrupt business sell thir assets.

The downside?

I still haven’t received my compensation for my 120 saved vacation days.

Here is what folks are talking about.

Indeed. But will they learn? I doubt it.

I bet. It’s so wrong.

Drowning is a good word for it.

He needs to be humbled.

Narcissists walk among us.

A blessing in disguise.

It almost always is.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.